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"Climate believers" memes go!
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I like it but it seems to imply the sort of traditional model of a company providing a service instead of a decentralized network. Who is this "our"? There is no "us" or "we". You might might make some nuanced arguments about devs having too much control or something but atleast from a marketing standpoint you definitely dont want to even hint at there being a point of centralization, which a word like "our" does in this context. Perhaps just write it from the perspective of the person reading it. So that it comes of as them having some sort of stake in the movement. I might consider changing it to something like
"Because my business shouldn't be any of your business"
Not necessarily that specifically, thats just to illustrate the general idea that im alluding to. Please consider it.
No no, you've misunderstood the implication. The implication is that your business shouldn't be <insert TLA here>'s business. That's why the image is meant to at least somewhat resemble that of a generic TLA. Oh because its like the nsa is saying it. "because your business shouldn't be any of our business" -NSA. Like that. For example. I get it now but it was a little confusing to dumb people like me.  |
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You know how AGW guys love to poison the well by calling us "climate deniers" instead of climate skeptics. Well I say its time to fight fire with fire. From now on we should call them "climate believers". They will hate to be subtly associated with religion, namely because they are a religion, and irrational people HATE to be accurately identified.
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The Monero logo on the merchandising stuff is really well done, its everything about what Monero is:
congratulations.
I like it but it seems to imply the sort of traditional model of a company providing a service instead of a decentralized network. Who is this "our"? There is no "us" or "we". You might might make some nuanced arguments about devs having too much control or something but atleast from a marketing standpoint you definitely dont want to even hint at there being a point of centralization, which a word like "our" does in this context. Perhaps just write it from the perspective of the person reading it. So that it comes of as them having some sort of stake in the movement. I might consider changing it to something like "Because my business shouldn't be any of your business" Not necessarily that specifically, thats just to illustrate the general idea that im alluding to. Please consider it. |
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How are you guys feeling about this project these days? Was this escrow one of my success stories?
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decentralized can mean different things in different contexts. monero is decentralized in the sense that it uses a decentralized proof of work mechanism to generate network consensus and provide byzantine fault tolerance. but yes in other ways it certainly is less decentralized than it could be.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. you as well |
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House of cards
Game of thrones
Breaking bad
Walking Dead
Venture brothers
Adventure time
Cowboy beabob
Avatar the last air bender
The sporanos
The office (both)
Code giass (if you can handle a little bit of corniness)
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As for the social contract obsession. Its important. Granted it creates some problems of course reasonable flexability would be ideal. But without the social contract you have nothing. You have no trust. No one knows what they are buying.
Monero is at an embryonic, barely usable stage (particularly when considering the potential for attacks, exploits, very damaging but unintentional coding errors, etc.). We used to call it alpha-quality software. With the benefit of the past six months of experience, I'd demote that to pre-alpha proof of concept. I mostly agree that getting to a point of a "hard" social contract with inviolable trust is a good goal (I think there are alternatives but they are vague and not fully developed, so I won't go there), but I'm not convinced we are ready to do that yet, in a practical sense. Ah right you were talking about monero and i was talking about bitcoin. I agree that there is no clearly defined social contract with monero yet. Not the same as saying that there is none at all. You clearly cant go and double the money supply after people already bought in for example. But with that said, neither are the exact specifics of the emission curve set in stone either, for example. Fundamentally i think we are in agreement here. It should be obvious that as long as you are relying on a central developer team for critical fixes and essential features, you are not operating a decentralized cryptocurrency at all. Instead, you are holding a speculative crypto asset that might, someday, turn into a decentralized cryptocurrency. decentralized can mean different things in different contexts. monero is decentralized in the sense that it uses a decentralized proof of work mechanism to generate network consensus and provide byzantine fault tolerance. but yes in other ways it certainly is less decentralized than it could be. When mistakes are recognized as this early stage, the benefits of fixing them outweigh the disadvantages of being stuck with them forever. And in reality, as you say, even Bitcoin isn't stuck with anything forever. If it were to fail catastrophically, this "trust" you describe would be broken out of necessity anyway. I say fix what we can now, when the impact is relatively small, to avoid the potential for much bigger and worse impact later (or what I consider more likely, the reaching of a fairly low success plateau where the "untouchable" mistakes limit further growth). Yes i agree. and that is why i say that we have something of a loose sort of tennative social contract that is developing as a result of discussions just like these and slowly solidifying with time. Its like wet concrete that is every day in the process of becoming slightly more dry. We are at a natural transition point right now, after having worked for nearly six months, having recognized that the initial donation funding model is a failure, the coin needs a lot more work than any of us realized, and has also in some ways been more successful than any of us expected. Let's regroup a bit, not take anything off the table, and do whatever needs to be done to really push this far beyond where it is right now. total support. |
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I dont think this is as dire as you think smooth. If bitcoin does get to the point where there is not enough hashing power to protect it, and someone does actually begin DOS'ing or doubespending than this will create the motivation to fork into some change that fixes the problem. Be that more inflation to pay miners or higher transaction fees or even proof of stake. After a successful attack the will to change something to fix the problem will be there. Will it lose some capitalization in the process? sure. But crypto is amazing and the world needs it and bitcoin has the network and inferastructre that no others have or probably ever will have.
I disagree how it plays out.. It won't get to the point where it actually fails, it will simply fail to gain value because its unstable underpinnings will become increasingly obvious. If there were a willingness to make the sorts of hard choices that you mention ahead of actual failure, then it could be saved, but I think the "social contract" obsession will likely prevent that from ever happening. Instead the value will flow elsewhere, to something lacking the flaws. That may already be happening to some extent. But i mean what failure are you talking about? Before any sort of successful sustained long term attack we will probably have some that are not long term sustainable. Maybe someone can afford to reverse enough trasactions to doublespend a couple of their transactions but the point at which this first becomes potentially profitable will not be the same point at which it becomes reasonable to DOS shut down the network. The point is i think we should be careful not to homogenize "attacks" as if they are all the same. As for the social contract obsession. Its important. Granted it creates some problems of course reasonable flexability would be ideal. But without the social contract you have nothing. You have no trust. No one knows what they are buying. One person thinks that he is buying something with a currency supply of 21 million and someone else thinks they are buying something with a currency supply of 42 million than you have a disaster in the making. Clearly defined rules are how you avoid conflict. No one comes on my property because everyone knows its my property, if someone else thinks that he owns half of my property and i think that i own half of his than we are going to get into a fight. That rigid social contract that defines the line between the two may be less than ideal for some situations, but it is what protects both of us from conflict. In the bitcoin world it may not come to fistiecuffs but parties will abandon the crypto if the rules are confused and undefined. or they will all fork different ways and create dis-coordination and make all of their monies less useful as money. As for the size of Bitcoin's network, I consider all crypto networks tied for zero place relatively to fiat. Yes the world needs crypto but Bitcoin only has a negligible lead on anything else looking at the picture from the scale of fiat. This may be a good point. Noted for consideration. |
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I dont think this is as dire as you think smooth. If bitcoin does get to the point where there is not enough hashing power to protect it, and someone does actually begin DOS'ing or doubespending than this will create the motivation to fork into some change that fixes the problem. Be that more inflation to pay miners or higher transaction fees or even proof of stake. After a successful attack the will to change something to fix the problem will be there. Will it lose some capitalization in the process? sure. But crypto is amazing and the world needs it and bitcoin has the network and inferastructre that no others have or probably ever will have. Honestly im more concerned about overspending on security because it is much more difficult to discover that mistake. Only perhaps through market competition and alternative crypto currency schemes that spend less on security but still are not successfully attacked could we discover that bitcoin is overspending on security.
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are you still hodling?
at price of how will you sell?
If someone offered you 1000 dollars for your car or 2000 dollars for your car, which offer would you be more likely to accept? Its weird to me that in bitcoin sometimes people are more inclined to accept low offers than high offers. Well not me. Just like everything else in life. the more you offer me for it the more likely i will be to sell it, so as the price of bitcoin falls i become LESS inclined to sell my bitcoins, not more. Is that how the market works? You just imagine a price and that's how much the asset is worth? LOL The market is comprised of actors who, by definition, disagree on value and agree on price. Very well said. More than that. I don’t think its possible for it to have been said better. |
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are you still hodling?
at price of how will you sell?
If someone offered you 1000 dollars for your car or 2000 dollars for your car, which offer would you be more likely to accept? Its weird to me that in bitcoin sometimes people are more inclined to accept low offers than high offers. Well not me. Just like everything else in life. the more you offer me for it the more likely i will be to sell it, so as the price of bitcoin falls i become LESS inclined to sell my bitcoins, not more. Is that how the market works? You just imagine a price and that's how much the asset is worth? LOL Well i dont know anything about worth. However that is how prices are arrived at, you just imagine a price and that is the price. Assuming it is your property and no one else is entitled to take it away without first bargaining to a satisfactory offer. There are a lot of people out there offering me 422 dollars for my bitcoins but they dont have them because that is not the price of my bitcoins. I just imagined a price that is different from that and since the bitcoins are my property, the price that i just imagined is the price of my bitcoins. Unfortunately however, im afraid that i dont understand the relevance of your comment in relation to mine. |
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are you still hodling?
at price of how will you sell?
If someone offered you 1000 dollars for your car or 2000 dollars for your car, which offer would you be more likely to accept? Its weird to me that in bitcoin sometimes people are more inclined to accept low offers than high offers. Well not me. Just like everything else in life, the more you offer me for it the more likely i will be to sell it, and the less you offer me for it the less likely i will be to sell it. So as the price of bitcoin falls i become LESS inclined to sell my bitcoins, not more. |
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I never thought I would ever think a tax could be the best solution to a problem, but that 1% seems fair and logical considering the needs. (Note: I'm a pretty big XMR miner myself.)
I think Anon136 has a point, it isn't really a tax, it is a price for a product (sort of). If you don't like the product, you can always use another one. It isn't as if there is a lack of choice of cryptocoins (1000+ and cointing) or even cryptocoins based on CN technology (10 or so and counting, including one that has been abandoned and you can adopt yourself for nothing if you want it). Fair enough, even if that's probably still a tax in the sense it's automatically deducted from your potential gain. Let's say it's a mix of both. Anyway I'd pay it. It's a no-brainer for me. You guys need money, you spent a lot of time trying the voluntary approach, it didn't work well, now you're completely open about it. I should have donated more (just paid via the pool) but I didn't know you guys were that desperate. To me that's another proof of your honesty, the fundamental health of this project, and another incentive to make it prosper. Even i used the word tax in sense of automatic deduction in an earlier post. If someone wants to find it and link to it they can use it to crucify me.  |
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You just have to try to strike the right balance I think. Do the best you can. Price: between 1 and 1 million dollars, date: between now and the the year 3000, isnt going to cut it. But obviously you cant say april 23 at 3:25 pm for $33,214.47 either. Find the best tradeoff that is going to work best for the needs of the devs but also for the needs of the contributors. Talk it over with the other devs and come back to me when you come up with something. That is assuming that you decide that you are interested in the crowdfunding route.
I'm interested in the crowdfunding route. Fluffypony posted some rough estimates earlier. Perhaps he can elaborate on those when he comes online. If it turns into a formal or semi-formal grant proposal writing exercise, then we are likely not going to be interested, at least without crowd-funding or other funding to write the grant proposals. Well talk it over amongst yourselves and if you decide that you are interested in using my escrow service to this end, you know how to find me . For now though im off to bed. Gnight folks. |
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Also, "wrongheaded thinking" is a loaded expression. It is patronizing and denotes that you don't really consider other points of view. If the best counter-argument is "that's wrong" maybe you need to engage a bit more in the conversation. Im pretty sure i made better arguments than "its wrong". Namely they consisted of the fact that anyone who wants can mine any fork they want any time they want for any reason they want. Everyone who likes the 1% fee idea can mine that fork, anyone who doesnt can mine a fork that is not like that. This whole idea of using words like forced or taxed in this context is wrong-headed. Its not condescending to point out wrong-headed thinking when thinking is wrong-headed. This distinction becomes blurry and troubling when Walmart issues your currency. Or other imperfect analogy of the kind. You conflate the dev team with a company again. I dont think it does. Unless walmart is forcing you to use the currency that they issue. But again no one is forcing anyone to mine on any particular fork so that analogy falls apart there. You conflate the dev team with a company again. Im not conflating the dev team with a company. Im suggesting that they, atleast in some aspects, become like one. And whats wrong with that? Companies make most of the most wonderful things in our lives. |
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Yea lets try the crowd fund thing first, i totally agree. I even offered my services to that effect.
Go for it. Start getting people to sign up and see how much you can (relatively) quickly line up in the way of at least nonbinding commitments. If it looks promising, we will likely be influenced in that direction. First I will need to know precisely what it is that I am selling to people. Part of the problem I think is that people dont want to commit to the nebulous idea of "munny to make munaro gudder". They will want specifics. They will want to know what feature it is that you will be developing with their funds. The price to develop that feature. And given the budget and the number, availability, and proficency of the staff working on delivering said feature, a time table for completion. Granted i understand that there are limitations to what you can know. But neither can people be expected to go into this blind. Do your best, and give us a specific price and specific features, but feel free to leave yourselves a realistically generous range for time of completion. People will be understanding and they will know that you cant possibly know exactly how quickly a new feature will be able to be developed. Perhaps this is a problem with the approach. Most of the things you say you "need to know" are largely unknowable (as you acknowledge to some extent). Crowdfunding works really well when you are going to get some device, trinket, etc. in return. R&D on an very immature technology in a rapidly changing environment is a different animal. You just have to try to strike the right balance I think. Do the best you can. Price: between 1 and 1 million dollars, date: between now and the the year 3000, isnt going to cut it. But obviously you cant say april 23 at 3:25 pm for $33,214.47 either. Find the best tradeoff that is going to work best for the needs of the devs but also for the needs of the contributors. Talk it over with the other devs and come back to me when you come up with something. That is assuming that you decide that you are interested in the crowdfunding route. |
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Yea lets try the crowd fund thing first, i totally agree. I even offered my services to that effect.
Go for it. Start getting people to sign up and see how much you can (relatively) quickly line up in the way of at least nonbinding commitments. If it looks promising, we will likely be influenced in that direction. First I will need to know precisely what it is that I am selling to people. Part of the problem I think is that people dont want to commit to the nebulous idea of "munny to make munaro gudder". They will want specifics. They will want to know what feature it is that you will be developing with their funds. The price to develop that feature. And given the budget and the number, availability, and proficency of the staff working on delivering said feature, a time table for completion. Granted i understand that there are limitations to what you can know. But neither can people be expected to go into this blind. Do your best, and give us a specific price and specific features, but feel free to leave yourselves a realistically generous range for time of completion. People will be understanding and they will know that you cant possibly know exactly how quickly a new feature will be able to be developed. |
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and it is not presently sufficient in the magnitudes mooted...it doesn't actually solve the problem.
Actually a 1% mining donation (of course this number is set in stone, I'm just using it because that's what BBR uses, I think) would make a huge difference to the development budget. In fact, it would mean there was a budget at all, which isn't currently the case for the most part. So a huge change. It wouldn't need to be the entire source of funding, but as a source of some steady funding it is sufficient enough to consider on that basis alone. Working out the numbers it comes to about 2500 USD per week at current exchange rates. That's enough to pay for a few days of full time dedicated development, which we are currently not able to do on a sustainable basis, and is certainly enough to accelerate progress significantly. I think the really important point to drive home is that, atleast in the bootstrapping phase, there is nothing "wrong" with this approach. In almost every other industry in the world, when someone develops a product they charge for their services. No one makes a pair of shoes and puts them up for free in the store and hopes that someone donates. They make the shoes, put a price on them, and then people decide whether or not they want to make the exchange. There is no reason at all why crypto developers shouldnt be entitled to do the exact same thing as a shoe makers for the exact same reasons why shoe makers are entitled to do that thing. Consumers arnt "forced" to pay this fee any more than a customer at walmart is "forced" to pay for the products that are on the shelves. I believe many things are wrong with this approach. I would ONLY use it as force majeure because it is so damaging to the image of Monero. It is not a business, it is not a producer, it is not a company or a startup. It is an open-source project in an environment of extreme suspicion. If something is imposed on the miners it is not a donation, it is a tax, and to pretend otherwise is doublespeak. We are here because we don't believe it is wise for any entity, especially one as central and powerful as the developers, to have a rent on the system. We are here because we are dissatisfied with exactly such a system. I have to agree with aminorex here: 1. Reputation damage 2. Corruptability / Tragedy of the commons 3. Yields too little now, too much later 4. Market methods are likely better in a suspicious environment - crowdfund small specific tasks, with specific requirements Of course, "swag" of any kind is good and memorabilia better. Humans hoard and owning a unique/limited asset can be worth very large sums for some. What I do not understand is, why you downplay the reputation damage, the socialization objection and the market methods, and handwave a complex adjustment mechanism for the tax level that looks even more worrying than a fixed 1% tax. Remember that the income tax in the US started at 1% as well. How are the devs going to impose something on the miners? No one has to mine or transact on any fork that they dont want to mine or transact on. "imposed" "tax" this is the doublespeak. Does walmart "impose" a "tax" on you when you buy a gallon of milk? No they charge for the product. The devs are producing code. Therefor the code that they produce is a product. A tax is something that you are forced to pay, a price is something that you chose to pay in exchange for a good or service, what we are discussing here is not a tax, it is a price. As for all of the stuff about damage to the reputation. yea thats totally true and i mentioned it before. but its only true because of wrongheaded thinking. thinking that im trying to mitigate. Yea lets try the crowd fund thing first, i totally agree. I even offered my services to that effect. But if other options are exhausted, than we will need to confront this issue, and when we do it would be ideal for people to consider it with clear thinking, thus i make arguments like those witnessed above. |
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and it is not presently sufficient in the magnitudes mooted...it doesn't actually solve the problem.
Actually a 1% mining donation (of course this number is set in stone, I'm just using it because that's what BBR uses, I think) would make a huge difference to the development budget. In fact, it would mean there was a budget at all, which isn't currently the case for the most part. So a huge change. It wouldn't need to be the entire source of funding, but as a source of some steady funding it is sufficient enough to consider on that basis alone. Working out the numbers it comes to about 2500 USD per week at current exchange rates. That's enough to pay for a few days of full time dedicated development, which we are currently not able to do on a sustainable basis, and is certainly enough to accelerate progress significantly. I think the really important point to drive home is that, atleast in the bootstrapping phase, there is nothing "wrong" with this approach. In almost every other industry in the world, when someone develops a product they charge for their services. No one makes a pair of shoes and puts them up for free in the store and hopes that someone donates. They make the shoes, put a price on them, and then people decide whether or not they want to make the exchange. There is no good reason why crypto developers shouldnt be entitled to do the exact same thing as a shoe makers for the exact same reasons why shoe makers are entitled to do that thing. Consumers arnt "forced" to pay this fee any more than a customer at walmart is "forced" to pay for the products that are on the shelves. |
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